Inside the Capitol

The legislature continues to press ahead at a rapid pace, and the Minnesota Catholic Conference is working hard to ensure the Catholic voice is represented on a variety of key issues, always in service to the common good.

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The Capitol is once again buzzing with activity and the staff and bishops of the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC) are hard at work advocating for legislation that promotes human dignity and opposing legislation that devalues the human person. The first week of session has been filled with opportunities for all people of goodwill to together enact policies that promote a consistent ethic of life and that put families first.

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The 2023 legislative session will be filled with challenges and opportunities. Governor Walz and DFL legislative majority leaders promised to use their historic “trifecta” to, at the outset, make our state’s abortion regime even more permissive and legalize recreational marijuana. These policy challenges present a tremendous opportunity for Minnesota Catholics to, as Pope Francis has said, “meddle in politics” by proposing a positive vision: the ability to choose what we ought, not the license to choose what we want.

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Now that the election is over, many of you are asking, “Now what?”

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops makes it clear that “responsible citizenship is a virtue and participation in political life is a moral obligation.” (USCCB, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,13)

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We are often asked — by both laity and priests — why the Minnesota Catholic Conference does not produce voter guides or candidate scoresheets that identify candidates and votes they took on specific bills or lay out their positions on issues. Understandably so, the frequency of this query tends to grow in the weeks leading up to a big election.

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In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King makes an observation about the impact the early Christians had in the public square stating, “there was a time when the church was very powerful… the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

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Historic turnover within the State Legislature presents both an opportunity and responsibility to make an impression on a new cohort of lawmakers. All 201 seats in the Minnesota Legislature are up for election this year. Minnesota Catholics must take advantage of this opportunity to transform the Legislature into a lawmaking body that places the common good over partisan rancor. Filling that tall order begins by forming our consciences and informing ourselves about the candidates who seek to represent us.

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The overturning of Roe is not an end, it is just the beginning. This has been the refrain from the pro-life movement since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. So, if this is just the beginning, how do we get to the end where abortion is not simply illegal but truly unthinkable?

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